We continue serialization of the collected edition of the six-issue 2018 miniseries Empowered and Sistah Spooky’s High School Hell, written and laid out by me and featuring art and lettering by Guest Artist Carla “Speed” McNeil and coloring by Jenn Manley Lee.

As noted before, last weekend I tried drawing and lettering a new "Metatextual Emp" page kicking off the bonus content for 2026's Empowered Deluxe Edition vol. 4. After struggling through drawing Emp with new(er) 8B pencil leads that had kinda-sorta replaced the long-out-of-stock Berol Turquoise 5B leads that I used for a decade of Empowered production, I had to burn up one of my dwindling supply of decade-year-old 5Bs to letter the g-d thing-- and my lettering was horrible, folks! (Then again, I hadn't lettered an Emp page since wrapping up work on Empowered vol. 12 in March of 2022, so 'tis no wonder I was a tad rusty.)

I thought that I had long ago accepted that the art (and lettering) approach I used for over 20 years of Emp production was no longer viable, but this one-page experience still felt like a bit of a slap in the face, folks. Clearly, there's no going back to my old ways of pencil art, even if I wanted to do so. (Oh, well.) 

Continued tomorrow (probably)!

Today’s Patreon update: Originally done as a means of scratching out more worktime to complete the long-gestating Empowered vol. 12, I've switched over to a Monday/ Wednesday/ Friday Patreon posting schedule that won't feature the fixed content format I previously used. However, my vast archive of years of Patreon posts—extensive Empowered previews, work-in-progress updates on developmental projects such as fantasy comics The Chaste and the Chained and The Last Party, vintage con sketches, work stages on covers, "damsel in distress" commissions, life drawings & much, much more—remains available for Patrons' perusal.